


A Lesson in Dreaming

by Tedronai



Series: Complex Games [4]
Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: M/M, Tel'aran'rhiod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1416574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tedronai/pseuds/Tedronai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which lesson plans are subject to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lesson in Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eirenne Saijima (ladypoetess)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladypoetess/gifts).



> Dedicated to Eir, who keeps reading (and hopefully enjoying!) my less-than-mainstream pairings and puts up with my whining when I'm stuck. <3

A carefully controlled mental command brought Moridin to the Black Tower grounds — he wasn’t sure it could be called a ‘thought’ when getting from one place to another in _Tel’aran’rhiod_ no longer required thought as such, merely… _purpose_. He did not control this place completely like he did his dreamshards — nobody had that level of control over _Tel’aran’rhiod_ ; it was not physically possible — but it had been a long time since he had needed to put conscious effort into something as trivial as moving from one place to another in here. He suspected the same might not hold true for his student this night. That was why he was early to the appointment — catching the man before a stray thought could whisk him halfway across the continent would make the lesson less irritating for Moridin and less embarrassing for Taim and therefore more productive in all respects; Taim became less than co-operative when embarrassed, and Moridin himself had very little patience these days to rein in his temper.

It was perhaps a quarter past the appointed hour when Taim finally emerged from the palace-like building — walking out through the door as if he were in the waking world and regular laws of physics applied. Moridin nearly shook his head; he couldn’t expect the man to know things he hadn’t been taught yet. At least his self-control appeared as solid as it did in the waking world; his outfit didn’t as much as flicker but remained very fixed in the form of the black uniform with the ridiculous dragons embroidered around the sleeves. Then again, it had been a long time since Moridin had seen Taim wearing anything else… except when he was wearing nothing, but that hardly counted.

“You’re late,” Moridin said wryly. “Trouble getting to sleep?”

Taim opened his mouth to reply, then took another look at Moridin and stopped in his tracks, frowning. Moridin arched an eyebrow and Taim shook his head but his expression remained wary as he crossed the remaining distance. And as he got closer, Moridin realised that the Saldaean was taller than he should be. A heartbeat later the two facts — Taim’s reaction and the reversed height difference — connected and Moridin realised that it was not Taim who was taller but Moridin himself who was shorter than he should be.

There was no mirror — and he didn’t will one into being, although he could have — but Moridin knew with a sinking certainty what he would see should he look into one. He was wearing the image of the body he had been born with; shorter, slighter, more pale than the one he had been given upon his resurrection, with black eyes instead of blue. That was not a mistake he had made before. _Curious._

With some effort he stopped himself from inspecting his hands — so white compared to his new complexion, blue veins visible just beneath the skin — and turned his attention back to Taim. The younger man stood still as a statue, hands clasped behind his back, wearing the expressionless look that, on him, signified confusion and uncertainty. Moridin could see him struggling towards a realisation — or perhaps against one. Moridin spared a second to focus on his new physical form and change his appearance accordingly.

“I’ve met you before,” Taim said slowly. “Your… other face.” There was something like accusation in his tone, and his voice rose almost to a shout as he continued, “I’ve met you before I… _It was you all along!_ ” His form blurred as his focus faltered, and then Moridin was looking at a much younger Taim, barely more than a boy—

And Moridin realised, somewhat belatedly, what the other man was talking about. The dreams he had conjured, as Ishamael, to push the young channeller towards the decision of declaring himself the Dragon Reborn. It had taken years to get him to the point where he could become a successful false Dragon — it hadn’t helped that the children calling themselves the Black Ajah had needed near constant supervision to get _anything_ right — and then placing all those Friends of the Dark on his path to prod him along… Taim had been slow to take the hint, but once the message got through, he had embraced his destiny to the fullest and become an instrument of chaos, as fine as any Ishamael had wielded since Artur Hawkwing himself.

It appeared Taim didn’t see it that way. Moridin was slightly taken aback by the look on his too-young face; anger, hurt and betrayal were so plainly visible that he barely looked like Taim at all. Somehow, curiously, the man had managed to hold on to his Asha’man uniform, which now hung loose on his much scrawnier frame.

Clamping down on his irritation, Moridin fixed an image of the real Taim in his mind, and the other man changed back to his properly aged form. “Really, Mazrim—”

“It was you,” Taim repeated, his voice flat and colourless again.

Moridin’s temper flared, and this time he allowed it free rein; heavy, purple clouds suddenly filled the sky and an unnatural wind picked up, howling around them, somehow without drowning their voices. “What of it?” he demanded. “Did you _really_ think it was _you_? Did you really think _you_ came up with the idea that you might be the Dragon Reborn? The pathetic, half-starved pup you were when I found you! Like as not, you wouldn’t have survived the next winter!” He snorted, and when he continued, his voice was thick with contempt. “You were hardly the stuff of prophecies. You were nothing!”

Taim spared little attention to the storm raging around them; he merely shook his head when the wind blew his hair to his face and took a step closer, staring Moridin down defiantly. “Is that so?” he snapped. “Yet you came to me, did you not? Either you saw my worth, my potential, or you chose to waste your time on a _pathetic half-starved pup_ , as you put it. Tell me, _Great Master_ —” The anger in his voice was perhaps closer in nature to a shard of glass than a blade of steel, but there was no denying its edge. “—which was it?”

And then Moridin surprised them both by laughing. “That was a decent argument,” he said, regaining his calm. He dispersed the clouds and stilled the storm with half a thought, then raised a hand to smooth stray locks of wind-tousled hair back from Taim’s face. “Although I did leave you an opening you could march a legion of Trollocs through.” He didn’t add that it took certain character to make use of such an opening while arguing with one of the Chosen… Well, it took certain character to be arguing with one of the Chosen in the first place.

Taim still looked angry, but had mostly regained control of himself. He grimaced and looked away as if embarrassed. “So I’ve been a puppet on your strings before I ever met Demandred,” he muttered, almost but not quite managing to conceal the bitterness in his voice. “Why am I even surprised anymore?”

Moridin shook his head slightly. “Sometimes I forget how young you really are,” he said — and saw instantly that it was the wrong thing to say. Taim’s expression closed up and he took a step back, squaring his shoulders indignantly. Suddenly tired of the conversation, Moridin closed the distance between them with a simple mental command and kissed the younger man.

For a moment Taim froze, shock and outrage in his eyes, but then he returned the kiss with almost violent passion. For a while there were no words, barely even thought, Moridin’s world began and ended with the man in his arms, frantic, breathless kisses, Taim’s hands gripping his hips, pulling him closer, closer—

“Light,” Taim gasped as Moridin reached between his legs.

“Not exactly,” Moridin replied in kind. “Guess again.”

Something that might have been a laugh or a groan or both escaped Taim’s lips. “Shut up and—” The sentence cut off with a startled hiss as Moridin pushed him onto the bed — in Taim’s own bedroom in the so-called Palace. “What—?”

Yes, of course; Taim knew very little of how the World of Dreams worked. Which was precisely why they were there in the first place. Straddling the younger man’s hips, Moridin looked down at Taim and flashed a thin smile. “This wasn’t in the lesson plan,” he said, satisfied to find he could keep his voice very nearly steady.

Taim grimaced. “…Subject to change?” he suggested, thrusting his hips up against Moridin.

Moridin’s smiled widened a bit. “We’ll see about—” He was cut off when Taim reached up to grasp him by the front of his shirt and pull him down on top of him. Moridin laughed. “Impatient, are we?” he murmured against Taim’s lips. He caught Taim’s wrists in an iron grip… And then, with a casual mental command, he made the younger man’s clothes vanish.

Taim actually rolled his eyes. “Dramatic,” he said wryly.

“You could do the same to me, you know,” Moridin replied and slowly, deliberately ground down against Taim, causing the other man to inhale sharply. “…I’m not distracting you, am I?” Curious as to whether Taim would actually manage to undress him with a thought, Moridin relinquished the mental control he normally maintained as a second nature in this place. He did not, however, quit distracting him, merely smirked in response to the scowl directed at him as he made ropes appear at Taim’s wrists to keep his hands out of the way. The younger man didn’t seem to appreciate being tied up, and Moridin didn’t fix the ropes too firmly into existence — if Taim could figure out that he could just will them away, he was free to do so.

This might not have been in the lesson plan, but Moridin had to admit that it was turning out all kinds of educative.

It took a while before Taim got the hang of it. It probably didn’t help that Moridin was relentless in his attentions, touching, stroking, groping, trailing kisses and bites across the helpless body beneath him. Finally, however, his clothes vanished as well and suddenly they were skin on skin. The look of triumph on Taim’s face, the beautifully insolent not-quite-smirk set Moridin’s blood afire. And then the ropes were gone, too, and Taim grasped Moridin by the shoulders and wrestled him over, reversing their positions. Looking up at Taim, Moridin had a brief feeling of falling upwards…

Suddenly he simply couldn’t wait anymore. He said something, a gasped command — certainly not a plea — and Taim nodded frantically in reply. Taim lifted himself up a bit — and then sank down the length of Moridin’s cock, slowly taking him in to the hilt. He was still for a while, eyes closed, head thrown back, lips slightly parted, and the sight of him was more beautiful than anything Moridin had seen in this Age. Then he began to move up and down, slowly at first, then with increasing pace. Moridin reached out to take Taim’s cock in his hand and began to stroke along its hard length even as he couldn’t help thrusting his hips up in sync with Taim’s movement. It didn’t take long until the increasing urgency of the pace told Moridin that the other man was fast approaching his climax—

And then Taim vanished.

For a moment Moridin stared at the space where the Saldaean had been but a moment ago, trying to figure out what had just happened, until it dawned on him that they were still _Tel’aran’rhiod_. Except that, obviously, Taim wasn’t, anymore. Taim must have woken himself up. Moridin shook his head in half exasperation, half amusement. He should have made sure this couldn’t happen… After a moment, however, the comedy of the situation caught up with him and soon he was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down his face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Taim stared at the document before him; his informants still had nothing specific on al’Thor’s whereabouts, but there were rumours of some disaster or another with the Seanchan. From an offhand comment by Moridin, he had reason to suspect that Semirhage had been involved — and that the Nae’blis was not happy with how things had gone. An image flashed before his eyes, of Moridin talking in his sleep, unaware that Taim was still watching and listening. He wondered whether that had had to do with…

He shook his head sharply. He was reading reports when he should have been getting some real sleep before morning, he was not in the best of moods, and thinking about Moridin was not helping.

It had been almost an hour now. An hour since he had woken to find that… well, that the physical effects of what happened in _Tel’aran’rhiod_ did indeed carry over to the waking world. Moridin had warned him of that, he thought wryly, although he doubted that the Forsaken had been thinking of quite that kind of effects when he had issued the warning and half a dozen others. Then again, who knew with Moridin.

An hour. No summons, no message, not a word. Taim tried not to wonder whether that was a bad sign or whether the Forsaken had simply been distracted. He tried not to think about how he might end up sitting there wondering for the rest of the night if no word was forthcoming. He was not fretting. One simply did not want to risk offending the Nae’blis. And in all honesty one could never be quite sure what might offend the Nae’blis…

He set the report aside with an irritable sigh. And froze. Slowly he looked up to find Moridin standing just this side of the door, watching him. “Look, I understand that you Chosen don’t like to use doors or knock like normal people,” Taim said, suddenly annoyed, “but I’d appreciate it if you could bother to announce your presence in some way, especially as you seem to have found a way to come and go without triggering my wards…” He frowned, trying to figure out if he had gone too far. “Anyway. How long have you been there?”

“A while,” Moridin replied casually. He helped himself to a glass of brandy and sat in the armchair by the fireplace.

“So…” Taim said after a while, when it became clear that Moridin wasn’t going to elaborate on the purpose of the visit. “Did you have a reason for coming here or were you just lonely?”

Moridin smiled thinly without looking away from the fire; Taim wasn’t even trying to guess whether the Nae’blis really saw something so fascinating in the flames or whether he was just being deliberately irritating. “Now, now, Mazrim,” Moridin said softly. “Such disrespect. I have killed men for lesser transgressions.”

“I doubt any of those men were in charge of over five hundred Dreadlords,” Taim replied dryly. “Or sleeping with you, for that matter.”

Now Moridin did look back at him. “Surely you don’t think yourself irreplaceable?” he asked, but his tone was not angry or threatening, merely curious.

“Hardly,” Taim said. “But it would be an inconvenience. A far greater inconvenience than putting up with my occasional… disrespect. Which, I should clarify, was not my intention at all,” he added. Then he went on, “But I do wonder. Usually you summon me. Why did you come here?”

Moeidin tilted his head slightly, and a small smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “We were in the middle of something. Which got interrupted.”

Taim grimaced. “Yes,” he muttered. “That was mildly embarrassing.”

“Oh, it could have been worse,” Moridin said. And then he looked expectantly at Taim. “Well? Or do you not want to pick up where we left off?” The blue, _saa_ -infested gaze flickered to the pile of letters before Taim. “Or are you too… busy?”

Taim blinked, then shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “Not busy at all.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Afterwards they were lying together in Taim’s bed, and it was somehow different than ever before. Taim would have chalked it down to the fact that this time it wasn’t going to be he who would have to get up and leave any time now… Except that it wouldn’t have been the whole truth. Moridin lay sprawled half on top of Taim — that was another difference. Usually the physical intimacy was limited to the act of having sex. Taim’s arm loosely curled around Moridin’s waist did not feel nearly as awkward as it by all rights should have. In fact nothing about the situation was anywhere near as uncomfortable as it should have been. That in itself might have been alarming had Taim let his mind dwell on it. Getting used to… _this_ … couldn’t possibly end well.

Except that it was far too late already. It was ridiculous — it was beyond absurd — but there it was.

Moridin shifted slightly, then raised his head to look at Taim. “I should leave,” he said but made no move to get up.

“You don’t have to, you know,” Taim replied without thinking. Moridin arched an eyebrow, and Taim shrugged. “Well, you don’t. Or does the Great Lord set a curfew?”

That earned him an eloquent snort. “You would wake up next to me?” Moridin asked wryly. “As if we were ordinary lovers?” He frowned, and something almost wistful surfaced briefly in the depths of the midnight-blue eyes. “You keep surprising me, Mazrim. Few people have truly surprised me in… well, shall we just say a really long time.” He lowered his head again, breaking eye contact, and closed his eyes. “I’m undecided whether that’s a good quality, mind.”

“Oh, you know as well as I do that you wouldn’t have kept this up for this long if I was predictable,” Taim said. He felt rather than saw Moridin’s smile.

“Perhaps,” the Nae’blis replied. “Tell me, why were you so outraged to find out that I had affected your life before we officially met?”

Taim grimaced — which was obviously lost on Moridin. “You really know how to kill the mood,” he muttered. Then he sighed. “I suppose I… thought I had a purpose? I was a man who could channel. The monster mothers tell their children about at night. But if I was the Dragon… there was a reason for it. A reason for those years of hiding and surviving. I could be the monster who will save the world.” He paused for a moment. “Ridiculous, no?”

“Actually, I quite like that,” Moridin said. “The monster who will save the world. It has a nice ring to it.”

“If you say so.” Unconsciously he raised his hand to stroke Moridin’s hair. When he realised what he was doing, he froze for a second, but since the Forsaken wasn’t protesting, he didn’t stop. “Even after al’Thor came along, proving himself the real Dragon Reborn, that one thing was still mine. I had raised an army. I had fought battles. I’d had Davram Bashere all but defeated. It was… _mine_.”

Moridin said nothing for a long while, and had Taim began to half suspect the Forsaken had fallen asleep when he finally spoke. “It still is, you know,” Moridin said. There was a wry note to his voice, but also something Taim had never heard there before something he couldn’t identify. “All those things are still your achievements and whatever he does, Lews Therin can’t take any of that away. I honestly shouldn’t have to tell you this, Barid; you’re not an idiot.”

Taim nearly flinched; this time, Moridin didn’t appear to notice the slip, and Taim wasn’t sure if he should draw attention to it or not. Probably not. “If you say so,” he repeated. He thought he managed to sound almost normal.

“I do,” Moridin said almost cheerfully. “Just do us both a favour and take my word on it, since you’re always going on about my superior intellect.” Taim made a noncommittal sound; he most certainly was not going on about anyone’s superior intellect, and he had a sinking feeling that Moridin was actually confusing him with Demandred. And not just Demandred, but a Demandred from over three thousand years ago, judging by the tone. And the next comment confirmed it; “Have you seen Ilyena lately?”

“No,” Taim replied, trying to decide whether this was the point where he was supposed to bring Moridin back to reality or whether he should just play along.

“Pity,” Moridin said. He sounded as if he were on the brink of sleep. “I liked her latest book.” He chuckled softly. “I don’t agree with what she says, of course, but she argues her points well, as always. Even better than usual, I’d say. Wouldn’t be surprised if this saw her awarded her third name. You tell her that when you see her again.”

It took a moment before Taim was able to reply. “I will,” he managed eventually.

Moridin said nothing more, and after a while Taim concluded that the Forsaken was asleep. Taim didn’t know what to think of the turn of events. He suspected Moridin was not going to remember the conversation in the morning — or ever — and he certainly was not going to tell him. But that didn’t mean he was going to be able to just forget about it himself. He had always known that the Nae’blis was not entirely sane, but it had never been quite so… evident, before. Was it getting worse? And if it was… Was Moridin going to be able to hold it together for long enough? And long enough for what? Until the Last Battle? Would anything matter after it? From what he could gather, from offhand comments and fragments of thoughts the Nae’blis occasionally shared with him, Taim had the feeling that all of Moridin’s plans were aimed towards Tarmon Gai’don — but not beyond. It was almost as if the new world that the Great Lord was going to bring about didn’t matter.

No; it was not going to do any good to speculate on that right now. All Taim could do was focus on doing his job and not worry overmuch about the Nae’blis’ already questionable sanity. And maybe play the part of _Barid_ when necessary.


End file.
